Bitter Betty and the Christmas conundrum

I’ve got two men on my mind at the moment. I’ve sustained an affair with one of them for a couple of months, relying on constant promises that he will leave his wife once she is mentally ready, or he is home from holiday, or Christmas is over – the time frame moves along as we go.

The other one is a distant-minded artist, who will sustain an intellectual conversation for hours but finds daily activities such as getting up in the morning and buying toilet paper to be very strenuous tasks that he wishes he could be spared. I suspect that one is prone to depression.

He is the kind of artist who will plummet into deep, inescapable despair one day, when he is so far removed from the humdrum of normal life that he fails to see any point in it. He is handsome.

The other one is not, but he is going to become a very successful business man some day, in the nice, unassuming way that sensible, talented people go about it, without losing his good nature or his loyalty to friends and family.

If the artist gets anywhere near fame and success, which he could if talent has anything to do with it these days, he will be consumed by his ego to such an extent that any potential partner will wish he had ended in despair instead. One thing doesn’t even exclude the other, which means he will probably end up as a cocaine-snorting, champagne-slurping twat with severe addiction problems and a permanent rent at a prominent rehab centre in California.

So, as I sit and listen to the Christmas carols, it is alarm bells, rather than Christmas bells that fill my mind. Jingle bell time isn’t such a sweel time to go gliding down the slope of trouble. I need to forget them both and look after myself.

And what better way to do that than to isolate myself in a snow-swept house in the countryside with my wonderful family that keeps shoving Christmas cookies down my throat? Yes, dear friends – cookies, I tell you, are the safest way to quick, unfailing happiness. Love can wait.